Friday, June 22, 2007

Is it a UFO ouroboros or karma?

The UFO phenomenon, still unexplained, in toto, has the amazing ability to rankle humanity and those in the UFO community particularly.

So-called ufologists are back to attacking one another in 2007 just as they did in the 1950s.

What goes around comes around apparently.

The catalyst for the neo-venom is Roswell, which continues to evoke emotions of a diverse kind.

Those who see Roswell as proof of an extraterrestrial visitation (via a flying saucer crash) are incensed with those who posit alternative scenarios, such as a military mishap, a misinterpreted balloon accident, or a loathsome medical/radiation experiment.

A current brouhaha has David Rudiak, an optometrist by profession and a creative, thorough UFO investigator by choice, pitted against Nick Redfern, a writer and UFO investigator who has provided several alternatives for the Roswell episode, including his most recent “theory’ (in his book, Body Snatchers in the Desert) that the UFO bodies were mentally/physically afflicted Japanese detainees being experimented upon by the U.S. government (using balloon-like aircraft) in New Mexico, June and July 1947.

David Rudiak believes that extraterrestrial beings, in flying saucers, crashed near Roswell in 1947 and the United States government has been covering up the incident since that time.

Redfern has other detractors besides Rudiak but he also has supporters, including the open-minded editor of the UFO e-zine, UFO Review, Stuart Miller, who is no slouch when it comes to the UFO phenomenon.

The current vituperation, however, is as uncivil as it can get in “ufology” with Rudiak blasting anyone who dares to suggest that Roswell may be anything other than a mal-visitation by aliens from outer space.

Redfern, and the Roswell agnostics, are holding their own but the pro-ET ufologists are getting rabid, as the 60th anniversary of the Roswell incident approaches.

Roswell is not the whole cup of UFO tea many in the UFO community say but for some it is, and Rudiak is one of those who thinks that Roswell is the smoking gun of the UFO mystery.

That he (Rudiak) can barely contain himself when any other view that the extraterrestrial hypothesis surfaces goes to the heart of why scientists, serious scientists, who have their own dust-ups (string theory for instance) to contend with, ignore UFOs: the dialectical environment is toxic.

But this has how it has always been in UFO circles. The civilized Donald Keyhoe, who also believed in the extraterrestrial explanation and the military stonewalling about UFOs, also met with opprobrium by colleagues who thought UFOs might be something other that alien visitations.

But the intensity of the present confrontations are unique, in that name-calling and invective are part and parcel of the “discussion” while dialogue and bonhomie have been set aside as each side tries to score points with objective or naïve observers.

(Redfern and Miller remain gentlemen in the scuffle.)

Will the current atmospherics subside any time soon? We hope so. Otherwise pertinent new hypotheses for the UFO enigma may be stifled.